It’s Halloween, which is traditionally a day for “trick or treat.” This has usually been mostly treats with very few tricks, but my family is suffering from a trick this year.
My spouse B, daughter T, and I have been planning for weeks to spend the month of November in London, UK, visiting daughter E, son-in-law L, granddaughter ABC and meeting new granddaughter JG in person for the first time. We were going to need to quarantine our first two weeks there, followed by two weeks for visiting, and returning to two weeks of quarantine back here in New York State. We had re-arranged appointments, stocked freezers and refrigerators for our housesitter and for my father, made a bunch of care arrangements for him, etc. etc. etc.
And now, everything is cancelled.
The UK, which, like much of Europe, is suffering a COVID spike, is instituting a raft of new restrictions which make travelling for leisure there impossible.
We are sad not to be able to see our family. We had planned to have JG’s baptism while we were there. Not only is our trip cancelled but the baptism will also need to be postponed.
When we planned the trip months ago, the spike wasn’t expected until winter, so we had hoped to sneak in before things got bad. The reality was that summer holidays started more cases and, when people went back to school and work, the case numbers went up quickly.
Of course, here in the US, the country has never had the pandemic tamped down across the country. We are lucky to be in New York State which has been able to keep its rate pretty low compared to most of the rest of the country, but the country as a whole is suffering record numbers of illness and death.
The prospect of winter making things even worse is horrifying.
I wish I could say that we would know when in 2021 we could safely travel to London, but it is unknowable. I guess I’ll just say sometime in 2021, we’ll get there.
Will JG be crawling by then?
Or walking?
*****
Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “trick.” Join us! Learn more here: https://lindaghill.com/2020/10/30/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-oct-31-2020/
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That is so terrible! 😦
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I know that separation from family is a common problem in these times, but it still hurts.
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Oh NO! I am so sorry the trip is off. After all the planning and excitement in anticipation of meeting that baby…to have this happen. A cruel trick indeed.
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It’s a bit hard to figure out what to do with myself, other than working on undoing everything that we set up.
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I’ll bet is excruciatingly hard. Each task another reminder of what should have been. Hang in there.
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I’m going to try to write a follow-on post about that…
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I look forward to it.
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Aww, that’s a bummer
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😦
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Oh yes, it’s tough. I haven’t seen my partner since the beginning of March. Fingers crossed for 2021… with best wishes.
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I’m so sorry that you are separated from your partner by the pandemic. Best wishes for all of us for 2021, for vaccines and medications and for the strength of will to take all necessary precautions finally break the pandemic.
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Thank you. We’ll be OK – luckily we have down days at different times so we can keep each other going! Yes, best wishes for all of us, for vaccines and medication and strength of will x
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